The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-08
Great Writers Past and Present.
 YnnkmN Rlasla

tllt ~EsUltOFS CtuuN tu HrfFf Y, VI lti more than his usual literary boldneSs ] makes the following statement:
 "At least three fifths of the litera ture called classic, in all languages, n' more lives than the poems and storie. that perish monthly in our magazines 1t is all printed and reprinted genera ton after generation, century afteI century but it Is not alive; it is dear as the people who wrote 1t and rcssC it, and to whom 1t meant something perhaps-with whom it WAS fashion a caprice, passing taste. X super. stitious piety preserves It, and pre- tends that 1t has Ssthetic qualitie, which can delight or eiify; but no- body really enjoys 1t, except as re- flection of the past moods and humor, of the race. or revelation of the authors character; otherwise 1t is trash, and often very filthy trash which the present trash at least is not"
 There Is an homes, boldness about these words, and a writer with lees literary har,lihood than Mir. Howells would hesitate to utter them, Liter ary cant and humbug is 80 universal that few words of manly truth from such an accepted authority as Mir, Howells are especially gratifying The unrcasoning and superstitious rev. erence which we accord to the great writers of antiquity blinds us to the fact that they are great only in parts, and that every authors genius, how ever great 1t may have been, was only intermittent. Even Shakespeare, the greatest genius of all time, suffered many lapscs of inspiration; and even his incomparable productions are dis figured with long dead levels of com monpiacc, iuivtd vii, and unworthy trivialities. Shakespeare, like all great writers, Ina. been fulsomely euiogized by millions who never read him and by thousands who do not know the names of his plays Though he is the greatest writer who ever lived, he has left behind him much that Is poor and a little that Is worthless.
 If this can be said of Shakespeare and what sincere admirer of this su- preme son of genius in his own hon. est inner consciousness will not say 1t? If this can be said of Shakespeare, how much more can be said of other great authors whose works have taken their places among the classics of the world. Milton's "Pasadisc Lost" Is great poem but there are many long pas sages in it, particularly in the closing books, that give but little evidence ot genius and bear unmistakable indica- tions of the pumping process. Few dispute the genius of Wordsw orth, and yet few can read his long poems entire without yawning. The great Goethe is sometimes duh by the hour, and long ago 1t was said that Homer sometimes mods. Dante Is heavy and prosy in many of his long didactic passages, and even Virgil, who per- haps wrote with as much care (though far from being the greatest genius) of any Of the classic authors of the world, Is yet a little tedious in | places.
 But there Is always tendency to overestimate the old and the classic. The temptation to hypocrisy in lit- erary matters is always strong, and 1 men are sometimes literary as they are sometimes religious, in order to bc im the fashion. It is easier to seem 1 than to be and ottentimes less difficult to praise an author than to read him.
 The real truth probably k that the literature of to-day is being as con scienliously and carefully written as ever before. There are giants in the earth in the literary world, even in these degenerate days. Mir. Towels regards Tolstoi, living Russian author, AS incomparably the greatest novelist who ever lived and there has probably never been so true painter 1 of actual life-men and women as they really exist-as Mir. Towels himself. And leaving out Shakes peare and Milton, where can we find in the whole range of English litcra- ture more genuine poet than TenDy- son; and in the whole range of the history Of letters where can be dis covered more striking and original ! figure than Walt Whitman. We are living in an age that has been made epochal by the transcendcnt genius of its philosophical and scientific writers. Even Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton and Copernicus surely do not outrank Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin in the far reaching and revolutionary character of their researches
 Great men and great writers did not belong exclusively to the past, and there are doubtless as many living to- day as at any previous epoch of the worlds history.